Reimaging The Small Church

Maybe because I grew up in them, and have pastored them, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make small churches more effective. I think through the years I've obtained a basic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of small churches in general.

Small churches are often much larger than their worship numbers tell. That's because church attenders today don't attend services as regularly as they once did. It's also because the real ministry of these smaller congregations serves both a nuclear (those who are active participants) and extended (those who hardly participate but show up when there is a need.) family. A rule of thumb used by church consultants is that a congregation is three times larger than it's average worship attendance.

Many folks think that the life of a church, and it's spiritual energy level, depends on its worship services. Actually most folks with experience who think about such things will tell you the life of a church depends on the vitality of its small groups. In fact, real spiritual growth seems to need involvement in small groups. The fastest growing churches in the world are collections of small groups that attend large worship services.

You hear a lot these days about churches having to change to meet the ministry needs of today's lifestyles. Often this change involves trying new things. I want to suggest that for small churches a needed church might be to go back to the way things were done in the past.

In the “old days,” the horse and buggy kind, it wasn't practical for churches in my denomination (The Church of the Brethren) to worship every week. The logistics of everybody getting together was just not possible. So what happened was that folks usually met on Sunday's in small group home meetings – often in the kitchen – and worshiped as a congregation in somebodiy's barn once or twice a month.

What would happen if small churches met weekly in small groups every week but once, and that once a month would be a time for everyone to worship together. Such a schedule could open an opportunity for better worship services. Worshiping weekly puts a huge burden on the resources of small congregations. You can bet if your pastor only had to preach once a month their sermons, no matter what quality they are now, would improve. Smaller churches could combine resources to call a pastor who preached at a different church each week. Folks who attend only occasionally (usually the younger members) would be more likely to show up all together at monthly worship services. And instead of spreading out the church talent to serve at four or five services, everyone could contribute to the one monthly service. Dare we suggest that having one service a month would allow time for a practice service?

The key to having an active congregation with only one worship service a month, would be the life of the church's small groups. Church's would need to intentionally work on getting everyone in the church family connected and attending a small group. The good news is that small group development and administration has been the “in” topic for church growth in recent years. There is a ton of resources out and around to provide instruction and operation of small groups. Word of caution – these small groups need to be lay led. The job of the pastor should be to resource the lay leaders not lead the groups. I would suggest the first step could be forming one or more small groups with potential leaders that the pastor might lead and train through for no more than two months. Then attempt to start as many groups as you can with two of your lay leaders in each group. Each week the pastor would check in with one of those leader of each group to see how things are going.

I'm willing, through the web site www.gochurch.info, to take a more detailed look at this concept and small groups in general if there are others who will join the discussion with questions and responses. There is no one magic answer to any small church or small group ministry. What works well for one may not work for another. The only constant for all is first prayer, second courage, third planning (which requires evaluating what you are doing and looking at what works for others), and, of course, the willingness to risk (which isn't going to happen in a small church without a lot of prayer and processing.)

To get things going if you have questions or thoughts on this subject e-mail me at montykeeling@att.net. Warning: unless otherwise directed your questions and thoughts probably will end up on www.gochurch.info.

monty keeling